One of the tastiest holidays is today - National Pretzel Day. I've compiled some older blog posts that are about pretzels and about my pretzel book Brother Giovanni's Little Reward: How the Pretzel Was Born. I hope you get to enjoy some pretzels on this day, along with my story of how the pretzel came to be.

This time of year my book Golden Delicious: A Cinderella Apple Story is always popular for teachers to read to their students. In addition to the wonderful pictures from Kathleen Kemly, the tale about the discovery of the Golden Delicious apple in West Virginia is a true story! I've run across some great ideas for classroom activities to accompany reading my book and I'd love to share!

Fun Apple ActivitiesProbably most appropriate for older grade school students, this was my children's (Mary and Ben) favorite activity when they were little. See how to make a "shrunken apple head" here.

Who knew the apple could be a great tool to teach kids about math? This activity from Mamas Like Me shows how to use construction paper and pom-poms to make apple trees into a fun re-usable math lesson.

Here's a way to help children grow an apple tree from the seeds of an apple.

​Do you have any fun ideas for activities to accompany my book? Please share in the comments and see below for a video from Read Aloud West Virginia of me reading from Golden Delicious: A Cinderella Apple Story.

My book is included in the top 10 results if you Google "pretzel books for children", and so are these!

Pretzel by Margret + H.A. Rey (perhaps most famous for Curious George) about the adventures of the longest dachshund in the world, who is able to twist himself into a pretzel and saves the day for a friend.

Walter the Baker by Eric Carle - another origin story of the pretzel where a baker must use water instead of milk in his famous rolls one day. The Duke is disgusted and threatens to banish the baker unless he can take the same dough and make a good-tasting roll that "the rising sun can shine through three times," which becomes the pretzel. This charming story was told to Eric as a boy by his grandmother.

The Magic Pretzel, a chapter book by Daniel Pinkwater is for grades 2-4 and is about a group of 4th graders who search for the magic pretzel of Alexander the Great, the only thing known to truly cure werewolves!

There are other pretzel books, but My Daddy is a Pretzel rounds out this list for today. It's a cute book about yoga poses that you can see here.

Ever since I started researching pretzel origins and pretzel recipes for my book Brother Giovanni's Little Reward: How the Pretzel Was Born, National Pretzel Day has been a holiday I always celebrate! After testing recipes with my grandsons, I found a great soft pretzel recipe, which is included in my book. You can also see the pretzel recipe here.

To celebrate this year's Pretzel Day, April 26th 2016, here's a link to deals on pretzels including some free pretzels from Auntie Anne's, Ben's Soft Pretzels, Philly Pretzel Factory, Pretzelmaker, and SuperPretzel. For more info on Bro Giovanni, you can click the image below or go here. Enjoy!

Today, I found this article from the Morgan Messenger (Berkeley Springs' newspaper) from this time 9 years ago! It's about the time I visited Warm Springs Intermediate School to do a fun essay writing workshop with fourth graders. Here are some highlights from the article that can give you some insights about my history and my own writing process.

Inspired by meeting an authorSmucker was first inspired to write children's books after meeting children's author Cynthia Rylant, who wrote When I Was Young in the Mountains. She was working as a children's librarian at the time and realized that there were no books that reflected her growing up in a steel town (Weirton).​"So many mills were closing. People had to move away to find work. I wanted to remember everything I could," said Smucker. As her father's memory of those days was failing and that way of life was vanishing. Smucker captured a steel town from a young girl's eyes in her book - from the eerie night glow of the mill's smokestacks to the mountainous slag hill they played on.

Award-winning booksSmucker's award winning children's book No Star Nights is about her memories of growing up in the steel town of Weirton during the 1950s. The books has won the International Reading Association's Children's Book Award, the ALA's Notable Book Award, and the WV Library Association Literary Merit Award. It also received the Junior Library Guild Section Award in the field of social studies.

Smucker authored A History of West Virginia, which was originally written for beginning adult readers. It was republished in 2004 in a new edition for ages 10 through adult. She also wrote a children's bedtime story, Outside the Window, and has a new historical fiction novel for children called To Keep the South Manitou Light that is set on a Lake Michigan island, which just received an award from the Michigan Historical Society.

If you can't view the image below, click through to this link to see how I worked with the class and about my advice to young and beginning writers. Enjoy!

The publisher of my most recent book, Eerdman's, featured a super article on Amanda Hall - the incredible illustrator of Brother Giovanni's Little Reward: How the Pretzel Was Born.

Here's a taste from the article:"For example, Brother Giovanni’s Little Reward: How the Pretzel Was Born -- my new book for Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, written by Anna Egan Smucker — takes place in medieval Europe, most likely in Italy (I thought — with a name like Giovanni!). I already had a wonderful store of memories from visiting Italy as a child. These impressions added to my imaginative mix: fabulous old churches, clanking bells, the smell of warm Cyprus trees, wonderful food, a particular memory of having the top of my six-year-old head kissed by a kind adult, just because I was a ‘bambina.’I started to hunt out art from medieval Italy. I have always loved pre-Renaissance Italian paintings, with their early sense of perspective, decorative plants, and buildings with the front walls opened up like dolls’ houses so that you can see right in. Having enjoyed playing with scale when I worked on The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau, I responded to the fantastical sizes of things in these early Italian paintings too. I was particularly drawn to the paintings of Fra Angelico for many reasons — their clarity and detail and their joyful coloration as well as the architectural structures the artist conjured. The scenes Angelico painted were often intimate in scale, even when he was dealing with epic subject matter. Like other painters of that era, he also worked on illuminated manuscripts. I thought I could have fun using those kinds of visual devices for Brother Giovanni."

Also, attendees will read first page from works-in-progress to receive feedback from the group, and network with other attendees during light refreshments.I was interviewed by Susan Mannix for the group's blog, As The Eraser Burns, with some questions about my own favorite books, food, and coffeehouse drinks. You can see that blog post here. Thanks to everyone for your support and I look forward to meeting this group and reconnecting with some of you on Saturday.

My apple book, Golden Delicious: A Cinderella Apple Story, about the discovery of this apple variety, gets a fresh bushel of interest during apple season each year. I am always delighted to see people writing reviews on other websites about how they enjoyed the book as both a great story, and as an interesting piece of history.

"I am looking for GOOD quality kiddie lit to use with my students. Smucker, who is a prolific writer of anything West Virginia and in fact just anything, tells the story of West Virginia's state fruit, the Golden Delicious apple. In addition to her story, she does go into detail about it and the Golden Grimes, one of the varieties found in West and thought to be brought here by Jonathan Chapman, aka Johnny Appleseed.

In addition to its regional appeal to me, I think the book also shows kids that people are often looking for improvements on things we have and what we think are impossible to improve. It shows that ingenuity can create good things." - Katy

From KirkusReviews.com:"This lightly fictionalized story of the golden delicious apple truly reads like a fairy tale. In 1905 Missouri, the famous Stark Bro’s Nursery is the place farmers send their apples, hopeful that the brothers will want to sell the apples to their customers. But Paul and Lloyd are picky, likening each taste of a new apple to trying a glass slipper on another woman’s foot. Meanwhile, in West Virginia, Anderson Mullins discovers a one-of-a-kind apple tree on his property that produces the most delicious golden apples. They win fair ribbons, yield year after year and stay sweet even through winter storage. In 1914 he sends three to the Starks and it becomes their Cinderella apple. Paul journeys to West Virginia to buy the apple tree, bringing back twigs to graft onto the trees back home. And from that one tree, every golden delicious apple is descended. The colors of Kemly’s charming watercolor-and-ink illustrations neatly evoke the time period and the agricultural theme. A standout amidst the proliferation of apple books found in elementary classrooms."

From Amazon.com:The Golden Delicious is my favorite apple! I was surprised to learn that its origins began in my home state of West Virginia. I enjoyed learning the history behind the sweet fruit and how different types of apple trees are developed. The book was well written and beautifully illustrated. ---- Jennifer Weingardt

Thanks to everyone who has enjoyed this book and shared their opinions. It's still one of my favorites.